YW New Beginnings: Standing in Holy Places

   I get the chance to work with the Young Women (ages 12-18) in our church & I love it. Being surrounded in a house full of boys its nice to have the chance to hang out with the girls sometimes.  Well on Tuesday, we had our New Beginnings.  It is a night when the we introduce the girls who will turn 12 this year, all about the fun things we do. Well, I am a Personal Progress specialist & I had the lovely privileged of being in charge of it this year. (Have I mentioned I don't really enjoy being in charge.) So we our theme for the year is "Standing in Holy Places." & we decided to do a shoe twist on it.  It took place at our local library community room, because we couldn't do it at the gymnasium at our church.  I didn't quite know how to decorate, & it was a little tricky to decorate where we were, but I think it turned out alright. Also, we kept in casual & told the girls on the invites to wear their favorite pair of shoes. We have 33 YW, plus parents that were supposed to show, so most of our room was just filled with chairs.

  This is what we did:

Look at all those cute shoes! 

The table at the entry way. The buckets our filled with our little gifts for the girls at the end. 

The back wall.  

     Our program consisted of our Beehive Counselor, giving a talk & then calling up the 3 girls that will be joining us this year. She gave the girls all white roses & told them how excited we are they they will be joining us.

     We had "A Day in the Shoes of " where we introduced our upcoming beehives, & told everyone how about a day in their shoes & got to know them a little better. 

   I then gave a talk.  It was the "Different Shoes of Personal Progress."  I had in our displays different shoes that helped represent the different values, and told a few stores to go along with it. Here were the types of shoes I used & close to the order that I went in.

                 Good Works: Snow Boots (I told of personal story of a snow shoveling service project)

                 Integrity: My husband's dress shoes (A personal story of my Grandfather)

                 Choice & Accountability:  Running Shoes  (Talked about choices we make every day)

                  Knowledge:  My baby's cowboy boots    (how from baby to adults we are here to gain  
                                        knowledge)

                 Individual Worth:  Camouflage covered High Heels, (Everyone, is unique  some qualities may   
                                            be the same, but we are all different with our own worth & purpose)

                 Divine Nature:  Glittered Princess Shoes  (You are a princess, born of Royal birth a Daughter 
                                          of a King)

                 Faith:  I used strips of fabric & told this story of the woman leaving Prussia from Pres. Monson.

                 Virtue: Temple Slippers (Because the whole goal of Personal Progress is to build enough faith,   
                             & to help you get to the Temple.)

                             

We then had a talk  given by our Bishop & our YW President said a few things & we ended the night.

Of course food is always important. 

These were are little gift to the girls. The "Stand in Holy Places" CD by Jenny Phillips, & a bottle of cute fingernail polish. I came up with the saying & our lovely YW President put them all together. Thanks Robyn.

 We had so many help & come together to put this on. SO THANKYOU everyone.  . . .  I am glad    
           however to be done with it & able to think & focus on something else for awhile.  



Oh yeah.  . .  I did find some really cute sayings about shoes, such as this one:
               

There are lot more, you can go check out my PINTEREST board, if you want to see my favorites. We never ended up using them, but they are all still cute!  So . .  I hope maybe that can give you ideas . . . I will be sharing later more ideas later on things we have done in YW or with personal progress. So for now have a an amazing day!